"Free Press's description of TV Everywhere is a reminder of the admonition that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own set of facts," shot back National Cable and Telecommunications Association CEO Kyle McSlarrow on Monday. "The call for an 'investigation' of TV Everywhere has no factual or legal basis, no matter how many times Free Press and its allies repeat the words 'collusion,' 'cartel' and 'illegal'."

Indeed, Free Press wants the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission to probe the TV Everywhere scheme to determine whether it deserves one of those bad words. This fight could go on for quite a while, so for now we'll just offer some data we've collected: what Free Press doesn't like about the plan, and the various responses we've received to its complaint so far.

Fiefdoms and turf

Comcast and Time Warner announced the TV Everywhere concept at a press conference in June, and disclosed that they were working on a set of "broad principles" that would make it possible for computer potatoes to access their video fare "free online and on demand" ("free" if they're already cable subscribers, of course). A month later Comcast made a small truckload of HBO and Cinemax content available via an On Demand Online trial to 5,000 customers. Time Warner quickly announced that it would soon launch a similar tryout with the same number of subscribers. In mid-December Comcast declared its experiment a success, proclaiming the birth of Fancast Xfinity TV—available to all Comcastians who subscribe to both the company's high-speed Internet and cable TV service.

But Free Press fears that the cable companies are not just migrating content to the Internet, they're also bringing the same regional monopoly or oligopoly model that they enjoy as franchised video providers.

"Under TV Everywhere, traditional cable TV distributors will continue to serve only consumers within their current geographically limited footprints, not competing with providers in other areas," their paper charges. "By tying programming to local cable subscriptions, while denying content to pure online TV distributors, the incumbent industry hopes to artificially reproduce the lack of competition for TV distribution to which it is accustomed, based on geographical fiefdoms and turf."

In essence, Free Press's complaint is that TV Everywhere won't be everywhere, and it will give the cable companies a competitive advantage that practically no other online content providers enjoy. The vast majority of Web-based video providers, online radio stations, newspapers, blogs, and social networks compete with every other entity comparable to their service everywhere that they can. So YouTube competes with DailyMotion wherever both online video sites can be accessed. But TV Everywhere's streaming content won't have to vie with other cable services, Free Press charges.

"Instead of being offered to all Americans, including those living in Cox, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable regions, Fancast Xfinity is only available in Comcast regions," TV Nowhere notes.

Free Press also worries that the TV Everywhere phenomenon will weaken competition between cable distributors and programmers. Up until now, Comcast and Time Warner have been fighting for Internet viewers with network programmers like NBC.com. But TV Everywhere will weaken this competitive model as online sites like Fancast offer much of NBC's own fare. "This eliminates competition between cable TV distributors’ sites and cable programmers’ sites online, which has existed for years," the complaint charges.

Bottom line: given the coordinated nature of this effort, the TV Everywhere model represents a collusion deal to allocate markets and fix prices (based on cable subscriptions). "TV Everywhere is designed to eliminate competition at a pivotal moment in the history of television," Free Press declared in a press release announcing the paper. "The antitrust authorities should not stand by and let the cable cartel crush Internet TV before it gets off the ground."

Exactly backwards

But NCTA thinks its pretty odd that Free Press doesn't like the TV Everywhere model, given that it stands to offer cable customers more service for their money. "They get it exactly backwards," McSlarrow's response charges. "It is an effort to ensure more content than ever is distributed over the Internet at no extra charge to consumers."

NCTA's statement suggests that the advocacy group exaggerates the lack of video service competition in various regions, which include not only cable, but satellite and telco based distributors. True—DIRECTV and AT&T's U-VERSE could, after all, opt for this model themselves, adding local competition to the equation. "As online video evolves, various distributors and content companies may—and likely will—come to widely varying bilateral arrangements," McSlarrow suggests.

And ultimately it's up to content providers to decide whether they want to work with this new platform. "As much as Free Press would like to suggest that something is radically different in this case," NCTA concludes, "the TV Everywhere model would be nothing more than content owners extending their copyright licenses to allow multichannel video providers to make their programming available online."

Amen, declares Rick Carnes, President of the Songwriters' Guild, in a blog post over at The Arts Lab. Bring TV Everywhere on, Carnes writes. "To date, lack of access to some premium content has routinely been cited as an excuse for the fact that the vast amount of music and movie content is illegally downloaded using P2P services," he disapprovingly notes. "With the advent of new and exciting services like Hulu, Vevo, and now, TV Everywhere, the chance to view and listen to the very best content legally is here. No more excuses."

As for Free Press' observation that newspapers have to fight with each other for online readers, which the media reform outfit sees as a sign of healthy competition—Arts Lab isn't impressed. "Of course, the newspaper industry is busy going bankrupt," the group's official blog wryly observes.

Obviously everybody is talking past each other at this point. That's a luxury they won't be able to enjoy if one or more government agency actually launches an inquiry on the TV Everywhere question. No predictions from us on whether that's going to happen.

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.